Plants

Flowering plants

Much of our work on speciation and diversity patterns focused on flowering plants. A particular interest has been why some geographical areas contain more species than others, in relation to the interaction between environmental conditions and biological traits. As well as performing global analyses of plant diversity patterns, prior work used the Cape region of South Africa as a case study for understanding the evolutionary processes behind a plant biodiversity hotspot. Past study groups included proteas in South Africa and orchids in both South Africa and Costa Rica.

Ilana Pizer Mason collecting samples for her MSc project on character displacement in Protea species

Much of the work is in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Recent co-supervised PhDs are looking at diversification of tropical trees in Amazonia, wild relatives of cultivated yams in Africa, and pitcher plants in tropical Asia.